Nowhere, out of Russia, have I seen the coaches so admirably adapted for small or large parties. You can have a section of a coach self-contained, dining-room, bedrooms and bathroom, suitable for families; and meals can be supplied from the buffet. If you travel over a certain distance you cannot miss having a buffet car; the law insists. Also the law insists on dormitory coaches on the all-night journeys. They are more commodious, because on most of the lines the gauge is wider than in England. There is none of the uncomfortable sleeping behind curtains, with, maybe, a stranger in the bunk overhead, and then having to wash in the smoking-room, which the long-suffering men of the United States put up with under the notion they possess the most luxurious travelling in the world. When you come to "special cars," a thing we know nothing about in England except for royalty, the United States comes first, but I would say Argentina is a close second.
Nothing could be jollier--when a sand storm is not on the wing--than travelling with pleasant friends in a reserved coach. It is like a flat. There is a sitting-room, and on a chill evening the fire burns brightly in an open grate. On a hot afternoon you have your easy chairs out on the platform at the rear and, with legs cocked up on the rail, you can smoke your cigar. You press a button, and when the attendant has brought you an iced cocktail you agree that "roughing it" in Argentina is a delightful experience. If your car is properly equipped with a good kitchen and a good cook, and there is a decent "cellar"--hospitality is one of the legitimate boasts of the people--you fare as well as you would do in a first-class hotel. Were it not that I might be thought a sybarite, I could write like a chef about the menus I experienced and enjoyed in my long excursions throughout the land.
"This is a nice chicken," I said to my host one night. "Yes, we have a chicken run under the car," he answered. I laughed, for I imagined the innocent stranger was having his leg pulled; but the next morning personal inspection assured me there was a "run," in the shape of a long galvanised screened box beneath the car.
It was pleasant to have a bedroom four times the size of a crib on an English "sleeper," to have a writing-table with electric light, and a bathroom adjoining. But the chief joy of a special car was that there was no changing to catch trains. Instructions were given that we would stop at a certain place at nine o'clock in the morning. The car was detached and shunted into a siding. We lived on the car and slept on it. Orders were given that we were to be picked up by the 3.15 local train in the morning, taken down a branch line forty miles, attached to the express which would be coming along at seven o'clock, and were to be released somewhere else at 10.15 and put into a siding. I lived this sort of life for nearly a month. It was the best possible way of seeing the country.